What Do You Think Of This Upgrade?

No it makes zero difference buddy, as far as ballistix dims are concerned anyway. Like I said before, crucial ballistix PC2-5300 and PC2-6400 use identical modules bar the fact the 6400 run slightly slacker latencies than the 5300, that’s why they can run at a higher frequency. Set the 5300 modules to run at cl4 (same as the 6400 dims) and they will clock to identical levels.

You really want ram that can run a minimum of 800DDR, with PC5300 running 1:1 with an e7200 they will start to run above rated speeds running the cpu just shy of the 3.2MHz mark not nearly using the full oc potencial of the e7200. This may cause a problem if you have poor overclocking PC5300 ram, but not the ballistix PC5300 dims these are an exception as I said, they are running tighter timings than most PC5300 sticks so you know as soon as you slacken their latencies they will fly!

Like I said before though PC6400 is perfect as you already know you have adequate bandwidth to allow an e7200 to stretch its legs. But don’t be afraid to grab some PC5300 ballistix sticks if you see them at a good price.
 
Cheers :)

I will try and grab either PC5300 or PC6400 :)

Say I end up with the PC6400, and I overclock my CPU... should I need to use a divider to make sure my RAM is not overclocked too high?
 
I'd be tempted to say that the P5K-E is a little pricey for what it's worth. £94 is getting close to DFI DK X38 T2R territory.

The MSI P35 Neo2 Fr will overclock as well as the P5K-E, could well have a slightly better Vdroop problem (granted P5K-E vdroop isn't too shabby compared to the plain P5K) and it should also tick the box as far as "looks" are concerned.

The difference between an Intel Core 2 setup and an AMD64 939 setup is that on the Intel, the minimum memory divider is 1:1. I.e - DDR2-533 is the minimum for 1066FSB, DDR2-667 is minimum for 1333FSB, DDR2-800 is minimum for 1600FSB. As the Core 2 Duo E7200 has a multiplier of 9.5x, DDR2-800 will get you a theoretical max of 3.8GHz, which should do the trick just fine. Generally when overclocking, it's best to remove memory limitations out of the equation by setting the minimum ratio available which is generally 1:1
If you feel it's a bit risky to buy PC2-5300 RAM, expecting it to do PC2-6400, by all means drop the extra fiver on a Ballistix kit that's actually rated at PC2-6400 speeds or maybe just buy the GeIL Ultra PC2-6400 2GB kit at £29 at the moment.

I realise you've already been switched to Intel but I'd just like to say that you're doing the right thing. While I understand you're a fan of AMD, Socket AM2 Athlon 64's are basically no faster than Socket 939 Athlon 64's "clock for clock". So really, all that upgrade offers is future Quad Core support (which the intel one does anyway) and a 300MHz bump over your Opteron. The E7200 will be faster than your Opteron despite the lower clock speed and will overclock a fair amount higher.
 
Fair play about the MSI hatred I guess. Although I haven't had a bad experience with them and this board in particular is quite good. If however you're getting the P5K-E for £75, I'd say that's pretty much as good a deal. :)

Sounds like a plan. Should be a nice upgrade.
 
The £75 deal did not really work out, so I bought it new from a competitor for £82.56. I bought the PC2-6400 RAM from the MM for £25 and I am buying the CPU for £83.88 from another competitor.

All prices include delivery etc, so the total comes to £191.44 - still below my original budget :D

Now hopefully I get at least £100 for my old stuff and it will make the whole upgrade a complete success (and the parts etc work too ;))
 
Mul said:
The MSI P35 Neo2 Fr will overclock as well as the P5K-E, could well have a slightly better Vdroop problem (granted P5K-E vdroop isn't too shabby compared to the plain P5K) and it should also tick the box as far as "looks" are concerned.
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The Neo2 is a fantastic board! For the price I would recommend it over the P5K-E. I was torn between the MSI and my P5k premium at the time. As great as the premium is I still recon I could have gone with the MSI and saved nearly 50 quid and still be happy.
MSI had issues back in the socket A and early 939 days but times have changed and some of their board designs are the best available.
 
Danger Phoenix said:
The £75 deal did not really work out, so I bought it new from a competitor for £82.56. I bought the PC2-6400 RAM from the MM for £25 and I am buying the CPU for £83.88 from another competitor.

All prices include delivery etc, so the total comes to £191.44 - still below my original budget :D

Now hopefully I get at least £100 for my old stuff and it will make the whole upgrade a complete success (and the parts etc work too ;))
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Given that your not overclocking the ram to the max ie ddr2-1066 to 1200+ I'd personally buy the ram new for an extra £5 for 5300 or £10 for the 6400 as it can degrade very quickly with more than 2.2v .
 
fester said:
Given that your not overclocking the ram to the max ie ddr2-1066 to 1200+ I'd personally buy the ram new for an extra £5 for 5300 or £10 for the 6400 as it can degrade very quickly with more than 2.2v .
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Luckily the Ballistix modules have life time warranty, so if anything messes up I can always get them replaced :)
 
My new motherboard, CPU and RAM have arrived :D I am only waiting for the fan controller now.

Unfortunately my university essays take priority, so I am going to have to wait till the weekend before I can do this upgrade :(
 
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cool, good luck with the build and make sure you add your overclocking results to the e7200 oc thread :)

If you have any issues with setting up just drop me a line, I know P5K based boards like the back of my hand :)
 
Hesky82 said:
cool, good luck with the build and make sure you add your overclocking results to the e7200 oc thread :)

If you have any issues with setting up just drop me a line, I know P5K based boards like the back of my hand :)
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Hi Mate, mind if I quickly run my overclock so far past you? (if you do mind, ignore the rest of the post :p)

I have it currently set at 350Mhz FSB and RAM running at 2x468Mhz (4-4-4-12). The temperatures hover around 73 after around 30 minutes of Orthos CPU Stressing.

My CPU's VID is 1.1500V and I have set the voltage in the BIOS to 1.2625V. If I run the blended test in Orthos, it seems to fail after a minute or so - would I be right in assuming that the RAM is clocked too high? I was not too sure because the guy I bought the RAM off told me the following:

Had them at 1061Mhz or 1021MHz on a 400 FSB and a 9 multiplier. I set the divider at 5:6 if I remember correctly.
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/Edit: actually it has been 8 minutes now of the blend test and it seems to be working fine at 73 degrees. I am going to go to sleep but, but will leave Orthos on :)

/Edit 2: I spoke too soon... just after 8 minutes it failed saying "hardware failure detected" :(


What do you think of the temperatures? The temperatures are all a bit too high for my liking, so what can I do to reduce them but attain a decent and stable overclock?


On another note, with this current overclock I got the following 3DMark06 scores:

Score = 11788
- SM2.0 = 5131
- HDR/SM3.0 = 5298
- CPU = 3057

Just before I upgraded and formatted my PC, I did the same test on my old components:

Score = 9332
- SM2.0 = 4265
- HDR/SM3.0 = 4682
- CPU = 1926
 
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Actually, no I haven't set my RAM to run at its rated voltage... let me go and do that now. Before you posted a reply, I went into the BIOS and put the RAM at 800Mhz and Orthos ran the blend test for about 30 minutes fine.

Yes, I am using the Scythe Ninja...
 
well if its still on auto (1.8v) im not surprised it wouldn’t run Orthos.

Get the ram running at 2.2v and set it ups so it is running 1:1 with the cpu. problem is you were already pushing your ram on a higher divider when you were trying to overclock you cpu, which isnt ideal!
 
Hesky82 said:
well if its still on auto (1.8v) im not surprised it wouldn’t run Orthos.

Get the ram running at 2.2v and set it ups so it is running 1:1 with the cpu. problem is you were already pushing your ram on a higher divider when you were trying to overclock you cpu, which isnt ideal!
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Right, so I upped the voltage on the RAM and it lasted Orthos for around 15 minutes - although I had upped the FSB to 358 and reduced the vCore by a notch. RAM was running at 954Mhz but I think I will try again with this lower...
 
I have also realised that I was taking temperatures using Core Temp, but Real Temp shows temperatures around 10 degrees lower. After reading around on the net, Real Temp is said to be better for Intel CPUs so I would now say my max temperature is 60 degrees :)
 
What latencies are your running your ram at, probably should be set at cl5 if over 900MHz just to be on the safe side.
 
Wouldn't it be a better idea to do progressive overclocking so you know when you really have hit a wall? Starting may be by 2.7 then 2.9, 3.1 ... so on.

You might need to set that ram to 5-5-5-15 btw.
 
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